


Honey This Ship is Sinking

by Bluethursday



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Breakup, Cheating, Dark, Kind of - possible coercive behaviour, M/M, Older Man/Younger Man, Sex while staring at the ceiling watching the paint dry, Underage Relationship, and they probably should not be fucking but it is glorious, dark smut, imop Tim is kind of still badass but i have questionable tastes soooo...., in the worst ways, no one here is actually fully mentally healthy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 07:55:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19808005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluethursday/pseuds/Bluethursday
Summary: The fall of Tim’s relationship with Bruce.Tim could, if he chose to do so, forget Bruce’s face. Forget the Bat. The hickey on his ribs can’t stop him. It was a mosquito bite, an accident with the vacuum and his scars, all of them were proof that Tim needed to be more careful in the kitchen. Everything was the right answer, if he said it was.





	Honey This Ship is Sinking

…

Tim clawed at Bruce’s back, blunt nails leaving harsh trails of red as he struggled to find some purchase to hold on to in the storm surrounding him. Thighs trembling he clung to strong hips, each thrust forward forcing his back into an arch, sliding his body further up the bed. Each muscle strained in the act. There was no softness in this mindless repetition of minetakeclaimwantmine that burned into the him.

Bruce guttural and savage above him, a god, a broken man, a prophet all at once shook in time with the one below. 

Giddily Tim considered what they must have looked like to anyone who cared to walk in on them. Two men, no, one man, one teen, connected in the oldest of ways both of them shaking like newborn deer.

What strange creatures must they have been.

With his hands on Bruce’s back Tim could feel the muscles shift, the clenching and tightening before the roiling smoothness that meant nothing in the larger scale of things and everything on this bed of theirs.

God. He couldn’t breathe.

Gasping for air, the well-conditioned room felt too hot to breathe in, his stomach sick and tight and far too full of something. It was like he was being pulled apart and stuffed too full all at once. He was a balloon that some idiot kept filling with air, his skin expanding around him. It amazed him that Bruce couldn’t feel that, couldn’t hear it in the small hitching gasps Tim made.

The “Hah.” To Bruce’s complete silence. The proof that sooner or later the younger one would have no choice but to burst.

Calloused fingers moved him forward, pulled him back in a parody of a thrust.

The air was too thick to slip into his lungs, Bruce above him, beside him, on top of him, crushing any hopes of getting away, any possibility of -  
Even here by choice and Tim wanted to run away, wanted to scream at this parody, this dark squelching mockery of love.

Bruce pulls out completely, his prick swollen and turgid, rising from a thatch of dark black hair thicker than Tim’s own. Pushing back in, it feels like the first time, it always does. The size, the girth forcing Tim open, as the man above him bottoms out Tim swears he can feel every vein, another heartbeat inside him. A person inside him, a virus, an infection he couldn’t push out, and one he welcomed instead for a reason he could not recall.

He was going to be sick, his insides sloshing uncomfortably. He really shouldn’t have drank all that water and he was freezing. His sweat running cold as Bruce ran hot, eyes dark and teeth clenched together.

The elder, bigger, and stronger than him leaned down for a kiss and Tim turns his cheek, letting Bruce’s head fall to the crook of his neck. From here he can see the ceiling, the delicate off yellow paint scheme chosen by someone else no doubt. Someone who wasn’t Bruce. That makes him feel better, the knowledge, the fact that everything does not end and begin with Bruce Wayne.

It’s a fact he forgets far too often.

As Bruce keeps bottoming out, Tim feels less like a human being and more like a ragdoll, the sloshing, the sweating, the sickness, fading into a cold numbness, his body preforming as his mind traces the way the fabric beneath him folds like his legs thrown over Bruce’s shoulders. Knees rucked up to his own shoulders.

He feels like paper and iron all at once, the vulnerability of holding another inside him fading into dark sensuality, into the cruelty that turned sex into a weapon. His bones melt and his hands slither into Bruce’s hair forcing his head back, sinking his teeth into his neck. He leaves marks too high for any shirt to cover and as Bruce leans for a kiss he still turns his head away.

Tim walks behind the shadow of a man so vast he becomes the night. One step behind, he moves in time and follows.

He is a servant, a soldier, a son and it is because of this that he may not walk beside. That he may not stand shoulder to massive shoulder with the mountain. He is child struggling to climb a summit that he will not reach because every step is false. There is no summit. It was never there.

Tim is in love. 

So he walks one step behind and protects. He is the right arm and the left. He is the legs that walk, he is the back that carries. He is every toe but the pinky. He is the thumb.

He is in love, and he has given everything. He is all of thirteen and he is giving everything away.  
….

Bruce’s mouth is kind. His teeth are not and Tim can feel them, hiding behind soft, thin lips. He shouldn’t be doing this. Not when he feels so much more than the statue in front of him. Not when Bruce amounts to a very large toy rubbing against him.  
….

He does not presume to understand the methods of his liege lord, but he if he were to guess that guess would be something along the lines of, loneliness and comfort and the ease with which Tim allows the gesture. The knowledge that Tim cannot hurt Bruce because Bruce is the king, the mountain and Tim is just a boy trying to stay alive.

Or maybe he would guess nothing at all, lips pressed tightly together.

He kisses back.

Oops.  
….

Bruce does not speak. Not the way Tim does, not the way anyone does, not when it’s dark out and the masks are off, Bruce peeling into the Bat. He speaks in grunts and commands like an animal walking on two legs. He speaks with cold silence and the gestures of his shoulders.  
It makes Tim want to hurl, makes him want to slap Bruce across his face and yell at him. For all his muster, the king is a man. For all the qualities that remind Tim of an animal he is pink skinned and soft bellied, and all the soldier sees is a man squawking like a chicken because he does not know how to use his words.

It is a weakness. It is hysterical. It makes him laugh, hiding his chuckles behind gasps and grunts and screams. It makes him stop speaking, stop communicating in a way that is efficient because Bruce for all his size, for all his power can not speak, that ability taken from him as a child.  
He is stuck with vocal chords but no understanding. He is a grown man, of a higher intelligence with a developmental problem Tim has yet to name. Something like trauma and a warped sense of responsibility.

Bruce is the Bat. Bruce, was always the Bat. How many children loose their parents, how many grow up to be superheroes? Bruce was never a child. He was the Bat. He had within him the traits that would drive a human being to go so far as to bring a gun to the trial of his parents’ murderer.  
A human who was a beast. A man who had no sense of responsibility, no sense of accountability, no understanding of what it was like to lose past his own loss. No sense of what it meant to have children, real children not warriors, to have to maintain a life for themselves and those children. 

He was a man who had lost his mind, with no connection to the people, to the “innocents” of Gotham. Batman was for Bruce and no one else. Batman was Bruce Wayne’s coping mechanism played out for all of Gotham, for the world to see.

Batman was not a hero.

Bruce grunts and stalks off after an interrogation and Tim follows. Quiet as a mouse, quiet as a snake, as a cockroach as a wasp. Quiet like a boy humoring a man, to keep the man’s pride undamaged.  
….

The suds come off easy and Tim rolls names with his tongue but no voice. He mouths them slowly, pulls apart every vowel, and stretches the call signs.  


Brrrruuuucccce. Bruce, Bbbaaattmaaan. Batman.

How easy it would be to leave, is the question on his mind and the answer is, frightfully. The hickey between his ribs indicates another answer.  
This is, however, not true or false or multiple choice. It’s not, check one and see if you’re right once you get the sheet back. Every answer is right. Every answer is wrong. There is no true and there is no false.

Tim could, if he chose to do so, forget Bruce’s face. Forget the Bat. The hickey on his ribs can’t stop him. It was a mosquito bite, an accident with the vacuum and his scars; all of them were proof that Tim needed to be more careful in the kitchen.

Everything was the right answer, if he said it was.  
….

“Tim.” Bruce grunts in his animal-human patois. I am sorry Timothy but I have an obligation to Damian and though I feel guilty and will self-flagellate myself for all my perceived failures I will never admit to being wrong, I will never be sorry. The whole world must pity me because of my loss. I am owed everything and I deserve nothing. I am a martyr, I must be needed. I must always be miserable. I cannot be happy. I would hate it.  
This is what Tim translates. This is what Tim always translates.

“It’s fine.” Tim cuts him off with a shrug and a half smile, “Look, Damian needs his father, honestly. I don’t mind.”

I would rip out your lower intestines if I could get away with it you bastard. I give you everything and stand there like it’s not enough like your little bastard offspring takes precedence over me when you already promised me he wouldn’t, when you came on my chest like a schoolboy. When you told me I could keep Dick’s name forever.

This is what Bruce fails to translate.

Tim does not fidget. He does not give anything away and he does not hug the mountain goodbye, “I will however, be leaving the manor. Temporarily, until he gets settled in.”

He’s been here for months. I’m leaving because I can’t stand the sight of your face.

Bruce nods, not even that. His head twitches. It could have been a reaction to anything but it’s not. Still.

Bruce is the mountain.

“Visit any time. You know where to find me.” Tim gives the elder. Of course he does. How could he not?  
….

Dick shuffles awkwardly outside of his room as Tim packs, his brow furrowed.

“Dick.” Tim sighs with an exasperated fondness he does not feel. Dick laughs and rubs the back of his head, “Ah. Timmy, you’re leaving.” It’s not quite a question but he nods in response anyway. A proper nod, one that could not be anything else but a nod.

Dick’s eyes are large and glistening, his mouth is a pout. Fuck. You. Tim does not say. Fuck you and the high horse you rode in on.

Tim sighs again; his eyes are half crescents as he smiles. His expression reaches the entirety of his face. He is happy. Of course he’s happy. He’s picturing Dick on a slab, pinned down like a specimen. He’s picturing him burning alive.

“Take care of Damian, will you?” Tim asks. See look at me, he’s saying, look how much I care about that little piece of shit. Look how good I am. Saint Timothy. The perfect son.

Dick pulls him into a tight hug, ’‘I’m going to miss you little brother.” He says. Tim hugs back, “You can visit.”

Dick laughs, “I’ll bring pizza.”

“You do that.” Tim replies. No he won’t.  
….

Bruce stands over his bed in full regalia. Mask up. He is filthy, covered in sewer and blood that is not his. He is sweat and dirt and Gotham. Tim knows that scent well.

Looking up at him beguilingly he opens his arms.

He’ll burn the bed sheets tomorrow. And the bed.

His hands run over the back of Bruce’s head, the man laying on top of him, holding him to his chest. Tim can feel it, whatever it is, seeping through his pajamas. There’s a cold wetness where Bruce touches him, where they meet.

Tim’s eyes do not water from the smell.

He’ll burn the whole room in the morning if that’s what it takes.  
….

He wakes up alone in his bed. The rot has seeped into the mattress and the smell has become stale in the worst of ways. It’s caked into blobs and crusty patches of ichor.

He does not gag. His eyes do not water and he does not bite back the urge to throw up. None of those things will make the smell go away, the last would, in fact, make it worse.

He smells like waste, human and otherwise. His room smells like waste. Bruce has dragged his shit into his home and marked it up like a beast.

Fucker.  


Tim is burning the whole building down. He’ll say it was an accident, an attack. He’s burn his skin to cleanse himself if he could. If it would make it better.

He settles for taking seven showers and two baths. He uses a full bottle of shampoo and two bottles of body wash. One bar of soap.  
He was clean by the end of the second ablution but he liked the ritual of the process and the could still feel the way the substance had dried on his back sticking shirt to skin, the smudge on his cheek and the dried globs in his hair.  
….

This is your first. Tim likes to repeat to himself. This is your first love, your crush. This will not break you.

The sad truth of the matter is that Tim wants it to. He wants this to be love that tears him apart because if it was not, then what was it for?  
What was the use? The purpose of breaking himself for a man he rightfully knew never loved him the way Tim had loved him back.

He wants to know if that was why? If Bruce knew in his hindbrain that he was not Tim’s pinnacle, his magnum opus, his great love. That Tim would leave him at some point if he felt like it. If his obsession, crush, childhood fantasy, faded away.

Tim wants this to be it because if it wasn’t, and it isn’t, he knows that, because it isn’t, then why did he give everything?  
He is scared.

He has not gotten out whole and if Bruce was the prequel, the stepping stone, and who picks a mountain as their stepping stone, if Bruce was the beginning then Tim does not know if he will survive the end.

He is in love. The only love he knows. He is devoted and he could spend his life by the side of a man who does not feel the same, and this the beginning.

This is the first. He repeats.

If you are lucky he thinks, there will never be another.  
….

He feels it coming. He knows it’s finally going to happen…even if Bruce doesn’t, but Bruce for all his vastness does not and will not ever matter. He will not recognize matters such as this until they run him over and break half the bones in his body.

Tim sets up places to go. A home in Paris, in Rome, in Seul in Tokyo in Hong Kong. He buys and sells and pulls together identities.  
He settles on Canada first because it’s easy. There are no superheroes in Canada nor are there super villains, not like in Gotham. There is nowhere like Gotham. This makes him happy.

He is ready to go at a moments notice, at any time. He is ready to leave. He is prepared. The fall is coming, the electric chair. He has been on death row for too many years. It is time. He will die or he will leave free.

Tim will not die.  
….

He makes faces in the mirror. He pushes and twitches and arranges it just so. He must react perfectly. He cannot be bemused, he cannot be happy.

Even Bruce will know it to be wrong; he will catch the scent of wrongness like a dog on a bone. He will find Tim out and no matter his failings Bruce is observant. Tim must play this the right way or they will both be forced to show their hands.

It’s such a shame Tim always cleaned his hands so carefully, while Bruce did not. Tim is the boy Bruce took advantage off. There is no other story but this.

Tim was young and in love. A child with a crush. Bruce should not have encouraged him. Bruce should not have fucked him, his mouth, his thighs, and ass.

Bruce should not have done a lot of things.

Tim is innocent. His hands are clean. His hands are covered with white paint to mask the red. He has been careful. His covers will not peel.  
Tim is not innocent. Both answers are true. Both are false. There is no in-between.  
….

Bruce kissed Tim. Bruce always kisses Tim.

Bruce is dating Selina….again. This time he means it.

Tim kisses back, wet and sloppy and slightly inexperienced the way he most certainly is not but it’s fun to let Bruce keep a misconception or two if it keeps Tim’s hands clean.

Tim is not the other woman. Tim has no idea Bruce is dating Selina Kyle, alias Catwoman and that they’ve had dinner almost every night together in expensive restaurants. Tim has eaten take out on the rooftops. He has shared rations. He is not jealous.

Tim has no idea that Damian has slowly been warming up to Selina. That he has realized his mother and father will never be together and that the woman who owns many of the cats he loves may become his stepmother.

No, of course Tim doesn’t know this, and if anyone asked him he would tell them that he doesn’t. He kisses back at lets Bruce take him, hard in alley, away from prying eyes, away from Barbara, Dick, Selina, Damian, anyone who would ask questions.

Tim is not ashamed and he will never have to pretend to be either. Bruce has too much to lose and Tim is the victim. He knows that role well. They both do.

Bruce grunts as he comes and Tim makes his soft fake mewling sounds, delicate and needy the way Bruce liked them. He clings and his breath catches and he holds back a laugh.

He does not moan, low and guttural the way he does not to want to, not with the press of brick against his back, not with the way Bruce pounds into him.

He pretends to come and Bruce pretends to believe him.  
….

“Hey Timbo.” Dick greets pizza in hand; it’s been half a year since they last spoke.  
Tim lets him in.

They watch a movie.

Dick tells him about life in manor, “So, you’ll never believe who Brucie is dating, well Bruce not Brucie. Can you guess?” He gushes.  
“Joker.” Tim deadpans and Dick’s face freezes with shock before he fake gags.

“God, no, ewww.” Dick shudders, “Selina. He’s with Selina.” Grabbing another slice of pizza Dick leans back on the couch.

“You know.” He tells Tim, “I think they’re really going to be good for each other. I think it’s going to stick this time.”

Tim smirks and grabs another slice. He’s not even hungry, “It’s about time he found someone.” he teases, “And you Officer Grayson. Have you found anyone?”

Dick squawks.

Tim chuckles, “It’s going to be really sad if Bruce gets married before you.”  
Dick hits him with a pillow.

Tim lets Dick believe everything between them is okay. He allows him to live without apologizing. He is allowing Bruce to retain his happiness.  
He bites his slice and swallows without chewing. It tastes like nothing at all.

He will not burn down Wayne Manor. His hands are clean.

Fuck. You.

Another bite. He does not excuse himself to the bathroom. He does not throw up. He is not the other woman.

She is. They all were.  
….

Tim nods to Bruce as he reclines on a chair in the dinning room. Alfred has called them to dinner. If Tim did not attend-

Tim attends.

Damian shoots him dirty looks and Selina’s arm is wrapped around Bruce. Somehow they have brought Jason.

Tim is relaxed. Tim is perfect.

Tim is ignoring the way Jason and Damian both look at him. I am not the reason your father is a failure, he wants to say. I am not the reason he will continue to fail you so stop blaming me and take some fucking responsibility.

“It’s good to see you home baby bird.” Selina purrs.

Tim is thinking of pulling off her long red nails one by one. He is jealous and petty enough to do so. He does not want to throw up. He does not feel sick and he is not upset.

He has some indigestion, Tim shrugs and looks at her warmly, welcome to the family, he tells her with his body language, with his tone, with eyes, “It’s good to be here.” This was never my home.

Jason throws a pea at his cheek and he does not dodge. It is a pea. Jason sneers and Dick hits the larger, younger, one on the shoulder and admonishes him but he’s laughing at the same time.

It’s okay for Jason to throw food at Tim. It’s okay for Jason to stab him. It’s okay for Dick to call him mentally unstable. It’s okay for Damian to do the same and try to kill him.

It’s okay for Bruce to fuck him and date another woman on the side. It’s okay. Of course it is. Tim’s not going to burn down Wayne Manor. He’s really not. He wants to though.  
….

Bruce is in his room. Suited up, he is standing in front of Tim. Tim is in a new room, not the one from last time, not the one he burned. All he does is stare and leave. Tim presumes the man is going on patrol.

There is no goodbye. There is no this is the last time. There is only a man’s back fading from view through the bedroom window. Bruce does not know how to speak and Tim won’t use his words. Doesn’t need to, not for Bruce.

Tim has never kissed the man. He has never started anything, but he’s pushed and he knows it. He was there when he removed that pebble that toppled the mountain but the mountain remained at fault. Mostly because it was, in truth, at fault.

Tim was a servant to a king. The king has taken a queen. The king will be honorable. He will be faithful and kind.

He will not sleep with his former, son, sidekick, and soldier. He never has. It never happened. Of course it didn’t.

Tim pulls his sheets up and goes to sleep. He does not cry and rail and scream at the top of his lungs. He does not ruin lives. He does not throw up. He does not need to.

This was not it; this was not the love of his life. This was the prequel. This was his misspent youth and all misspent youths never happened.  
Tim is nineteen and his first love is over. It has been shot by a row of men with very few morals and very large guns. It has been embalmed and dressed and placed in a coffin. It has been buried. The coffin has decomposed, the worms have eaten it. The bones are gone. The tombstone desecrated.

It has been forgotten.

There is no mountain. There is no man. There is no Bat.

I have no idea what you’re talking about.  
….

Tim pokes at the stitches on his side. Tim has a new spleen. His misspent youth is over. He wonders if he’ll fall in love, properly this time. Truly, with all of himself.

He wonders if the other would get out alive. The unknown object of his future affections. He does not think they will, not if they break him the way someone who does not exist could not. Not if they try.

Tim’s hand is on his stitches. 

He will always get out alive. Everyone else is questionable. Everyone else will not, not at the expense of Tim.


End file.
